


You Will Learn

by mizface



Series: Linnet Bird [5]
Category: Harper's Island
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 21:11:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11859750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mizface/pseuds/mizface
Summary: Madison hated ceramics class.





	You Will Learn

**Author's Note:**

> Written for dSC6Dsnippets, prompt of center. This little character study (that's really more head-canon than anything, sorry!)is set fairly soon after the events of the show. As always, the title comes from a _Sweeney Todd_ lyric.

Madison _hated_ ceramics class.

It was surprising. Getting her hands dirty, digging into the earth, stepping bare feet into the mud are all things she enjoyed, and not only because they made Shea wrinkle her nose and shoot despairing, disappointed looks Madison's way when she thought they wouldn’t be seen. Madison genuinely liked the slippery feeling, and squishing her hands together to watch the mud slip through her clenched fingers.

So when a summer ceramics class was announced, Madison knew she had to go. Art had been suggested as a form of therapy after The Island; she’d taken to it like it was what she was born to do. Therapists, and then instructors all praised her ability to draw and paint, to translate what she saw onto the page. So Shea agreed, probably thinking that maybe this would be a way to channel Madison's messier tendencies into a more refined result.

At first, it was wonderful. Coil pots, slabs, molded shapes held onto scored surfaces with slip… she loved the process, turning earth into art. Creating beauty from such crude materials was a heady feeling.

Then they moved to the wheel. Madison’s pots came out lopsided and bottom-heavy, or more often, tore apart as she was making them. She just couldn't get the clay to sit right on the wheel, and if you couldn't do that, there was no way the piece would come out. She crushed more than one attempt in frustration, and finally refused to do anything on the machine. 

It would be years before she tried again, even longer before she finally got the trick of it. Centering the clay, it turned out, was a lot easier once you yourself had found your own center.

Luckily, she never lost her love for getting her hands dirty.


End file.
